


Homecoming

by Shadowmun



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmun/pseuds/Shadowmun
Summary: Set after the first season: First meeting of Ryker and Ortega after he is set free. Goes not so well as expected.
Relationships: Kristin Ortega/Elias Ryker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Not a full story, only a scene, for which I wanted to see, how it turns out.  
> Non betaread, non native.  
> Constructive criticism explicitely wanted.

“If…” That is the word that remains… In the cold, in the dark… “If…” She may have loved him, but she was not sure, what a man he was, not really. Elias Ryker lost more, than just a few days on ice. He lost trust.

How could she be there, and think, he would kill. For real. How could she think, he would lie in her face? It didn’t matter, the police were not on his side, despite him being one of their own. It didn’t matter, Tanaka was not on his side, despite him being one of Tanaka’s best…. It did matter, that she wasn’t.

All the long time in the dark this hurt the most. She wasn’t.

\----

Kristin was there, when he was resleeved, and in his birth sleeve, no less. She was there, a strange look in her eyes, barely blinking, never looking away, while he tried to regain his grasp on reality, on his body. Silent… guilty?

She helped him dress, with efficient, well-measured movements, did not dare to make the first step to reconciliation, did not trust, he was really… well, him. But he was, wasn’t he? The constant checking was really exhausting, unnerving.

“What?”, he asked, not completely bare of aggression. “What?”

She shook her head and reached out softly, falling short of his face and just touching his forearm. “I just can’t believe you are back.”

For a moment, he pondered accusing her: ‘No thanks to you…’, but then, finally fully aware of his surroundings small details started to flood into his mind, each a facette of a reality he did not yet understand. The bruises on her face, and her hands… the tired look in her eyes, the black band she wore on her arm, something so anciently old-fashioned, it did not fit her usual self.

So instead, he uttered: “Who died?”

The well-measured smile on her face crumbled, tears flooded her eyes and she could barely avoid letting them fall. It was just a moment, then she had the grief contained again, but behind that wall of restraint the flesh lay sore and wounded. “Mi mama, Aboud, mi hermano, sus hijos… almost… you…”

Out of instinct, Elias scratched his neck and felt the distinct lack of a very prominent scar. So… not his birth sleeve after all, but a very elaborate clone. “We shouldn’t talk here…”, he suggested softly, eager to leave Psychosec as soon as possible, and judging her nod, she didn’t like it any more than him.

Silently, they left the building, silently they walked by, until they arrived at her place. Their place? Ryker wasn’t sure. It should have been… but Kristin was not who she had been, and for him, well he wasn’t either…

The walk had left some strange impressions on him. Places, not quite remembered, but not as alien, as they should have been. Faces of strangers, not filled with the usual mixture of contempt and fear buts filled with something entirely different. Pity? Sympathy?

Something had happened with his sleeve. Something that changed it. Him. Something so fundamental, that despite the removal of the stack, his body remembered not being him, being someone else… Someone Kristin had known, someone, she had met, behind his eyes.

He didn’t want to know… But he needed to, if this was meant to lead to anything, if he wanted her back. And he did… didn’t he? For a moment, the breach of trust between them struggled against the pity for her, the lonesomeness she radiated. But it was a lost cause.

All self-pity and disappointment aside, she was still the woman he loved, the woman who could talk him out of everything, the one woman, he would come back for, even from death. He put his hand on her shoulder, turned her, pulled her into a careful embrace. “I am here, Kristin. Whatever happened, I am here. And I will be there for you. I promise.”

“Damn sure, you are!”, she swore, followed by a stream of Spanish, so fast, he couldn’t follow. When she calmed down, she told him the story. Told him everything. Of the envoy, of the Elliots, of Poe. Of the Bancrofts and Reilinn… of the nightmarish darkness within the Meths’ mind. A story so messed up, it seemed to have no root in reality but to stem out of a madman’s fairy tale book. “And all that, just to get you back…”, she ended, still encased with in his arms, if not like a lover but more like a stick doll, wooden and lifeless.

Ryker hesitated. He forgave her the moment of doubt, he really did. But he could not forget. And he didn’t know, what to do with everything else… With the man, who wore his sleeve, with the people, who would always search for a familiar spark in his eyes and never find one. With everything. Somehow, this was worse than being on ice, so much more complicated.

Carefully, not to startle her, he withdrew himself and sighed tiredly. “Kristin, I know, it’s been hard for you… but… I need time to come to terms…”

She nodded, holding back disappointment, bitterness, all the terrible, cruel things, she could have said to him… Just a nod. “Of course.”

The moment went by and he couldn’t take it back. Somehow, they would never be the same… all he could hope for, was that together, they might work out to be something different.


End file.
